Category Archives: Drawing

More of that Zippo engraving jazz

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on November 6, 2009 No comments

My bulino practice plate has had some progress, so now it is about 50% completed. Unfortunately at this time I don’t have time to work on it for quite some time. Few engraving, knife and sword projects need my attention. But, here’s what I have up to now.

Bulino Angel

Bulino Angel

I definitely learned a lot from this practice and next one will be hopefully better. It is was quite a surprise for me how small the dots have to be to create nice smooth effect. Basically just mere teeny-tiny scratches on the surface and even then it’s rather easy to overdo it. That engraving is 5cm high, nose is 1mm high and 0.5mm wide. Just to give you a sense of scale…

In the mean time I engraved one more Zippo for a customer. Design was given to me, so my job was just to engrave it.

Engraved Zippo

Engraved Zippo

Quite nice design, isn’t it?

Design for Zippo I’m also preparing for next Zippo engraving project. Design for that engraving is about 90% completed, just need to touch it up a little and it’s ready to do. As you can see I’m trying out yet another style. It’s called Liberty (some engravers call it spaghetti scroll, because of all those long, skinny and intervening… spaghettis). So, if you’re interested in getting a Zippo with that kind of engraving, now is the time to let me know.

Sketch a Day: Days 15-30

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on March 12, 2009 3 comments

Here are the next and final sketches. Some better, some worse, some outright ugly. But the good news is that it can only get better!

Pencil sketches

Pencil sketches

Pencil sketches

Sketch a Day: Days 7-14

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on February 9, 2009 No comments

Here’s last week’s batch of sketches. Some are better, some worse. Final conclusion is, that I should just practice more.

Sketch of an eye and nose

Sketch of a mouth and ear

Sketch of a hand and owl

Sketch of a squirrel and eagle

Sketch a Day: Day 6 (and Zippo progress)

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on February 1, 2009 1 comment

You wouldn’t want to run into one of these in the night.

Own in pencil sketch

That fella is sort of recognisable, isn’t he? But I think I will start posting after every other day or so, not to bore you to death with my crappy drawings.

But here is also a teaser of soon to be finished Zippo engraving.

Alsmost finished Zippo engraving

Lower right corner is already inked, so that’s how the final result will look like.

Sketch a Day: Day 5

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on January 31, 2009 No comments

Pencil drawing of a panther

Ok, panthers usually aren’t that ugly, but it’s a start, right? Actually I start to like this drawing/sketching thing more and more. I just have to practice to get anything that might resemble a good result.

Sketch a Day: Day 4

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on January 31, 2009 No comments

A magnificent bird in a not so magnificent drawing.

Pencil drawing of a bald eagle

Sketch a Day: Day 3 (and bit of Zippo shading)

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on January 29, 2009 No comments

Today’s sketch gave me also fits. Just couldn’t get it right.

Pencil sketch of Newton's photo

Maybe some of you recognize from which photo this model is taken from? There were 4 of them… Anyways, I think I will take a little break from full figure drawing and try out something else. Maybe just hands. These don’t come easily either (what does?).

But on another note. One Zippo engraving is starting to take a shape. Today I managed to start shading. Here’s a bit of it.

Engraved Zippo shading

Sketch a Day: Day 2

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on January 28, 2009 4 comments

Ok, I’m a little embarrased about this sketch, but deal is a deal and here it is.

Sketch of a human body

I tried and tried, but it still came out as a freak of nature. Guy looks like is paper thin :)

Sketch a Day: Day 1

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on January 27, 2009 No comments

I came up with a weird idea – make one sketch every day for next 30 days. Sketches will be studies of human figure and animals. Mostly human figure. I will post all my tries here, so in the next 30 days I will post at least one post per day.

Main goal is of course to learn to draw, so when someone wants an engraving about anything besides floral scrollwork I can do it. If you can’t draw it, you can’t engrave it.

Many human figure studies will be made from Pose Maniacs site. This site has about 19000 different poses for the exact purpose of learning human figure. Visible musculature and no hair. Perfect.

Here’s today’s sketch.

Human figure drawing

I hope that after 30 days there’s some improvement…

Learning drawing

Posted by Viljo Marrandi on January 21, 2009 5 comments

Whenever you ask any engraver what is the most important thing in engraving, or in learning to engrave, they’ll say right away “Drawing and design!”. Good design executed badly looks better than bad design executed perfectly. And “If you can’t draw it, you can’t engrave it”.

So my goal for year 2009 is to learn drawing, design and related art stuff as much as possible. I went to portrait drawing course and started to study design in university. This will be an interesting and very busy year.

Here are my first feeble attempts in drawing ‘stuff’. I have had very little practice and it shows. Mainly I post for the record – would be nice to come back in a year or two and see how much I’ve progressed.

This is my model for learning human figure.

Naked model

And here’s my first go at it.

Wooden model drawing

And here is yours truly.

Self portrait in pencil

As you can see, I still need ‘some’ practice :) . But at least learning is fun when you can see the results.